Thursday, February 11, 2016

The GHCN data for January is now fairly complete. The TempLS report is here. Unusually, the holdup this time was US data, which is usually first to appear. The headline result is that TempLS mesh is down from 0.97°C (1961-90 base) in December to 0.899°C in January, almost the same as November. TempLS grid showed a greater drop of 0.18°C.

The lead up indicators were mixed. The satellite measures rose quite strongly. The satellite measures rose quite strongly. The Moyhu NCEP/NCAR index showed a small rise of about 0.04°C, as I believe did Weatherbell. But Karsten, based on GFS, had a very large drop of 0.25°C, and for NCEP/NCAR 0.15°C. There is support for a significant drop. I would expect falls in GISS and NOAA, though possibly not quite as large.

The daily NCEP/NCAR helps understand what happened. The first half of Jan was very warm, and then a sudden cooling. Back to very warm in February. It seems qite likely that different measures might get variable results there.

I'll focus this time on the breakdown, which is, as shown in the regular report, here:

It shows the actual area-weighted contributions of each region to the monthly anomaly. Interestingly, SST rose, after a dip in December. But Europe, Australia and Antarctica were well down relative to earlier months, and other regions somewhat more subdued, except Arctic, which was warmer. The Spherical Harmonics map and the stations reporting are in the report. Notable features are a warm Canada and a fairly narrow band of cold stretching from Scandinavia to China, with hot spots either side. Also, of course, El Nino.

6 comments:

Looks like the recent series of high peaks in the CFSR daily estimates that began in October are beginning to subside. The peak in early February is noticeably lower than the last several. I added a page showing the latest UM CCI daily data that I plan to update most days:https://oz4caster.wordpress.com/cfsr/

Nick, I think that GISS will treat the ice-covered Arctic Ocean and nearby land differently. It will likely be filled with +4 to 10 C anomaly extrapolated from the Arctic outpost stations. For instance, Eureka, the northernmost Canadian station is still missing (no red cross on the map) but the Jan anomaly is +5.4 C according to Ogimet.West Antarctica was also warm according to the reanalyses. Giss may pick up some of that if/when the SCAR stations Byrd and Theresa eventually report..

TempLS mesh is from 0.97°C to 0.899°C an only 0.07 drop, not 0.09 as in the headline.I expected a similar drop in the GISS temperature anomaly for Jan from the correlation already after the December values were out. But for Feb my GISS forecast (using only data until Dec 15) is more then 1.2°C. We will see.

GISS just reported Jan temperatures, 1.13 C, up 0.02 C from Dec. This small rise is similar to that suggested by the reanalyses; Moyhu NCEP/NCAR, Weatherbell NCEP/CFSR, and ERA-interim, driven by crazy anomalies in the Arctic, that compensates the Eurasian cold areas..